Little bit of everything

So this post is going to be a random collection of my thoughts/observations from the last week or so, and I'm sure it will turn into a rant here or there, so be warned.


Chad and I enrolled in a weight-loss challenge offered by one of the local hospitals, apparently similar to "The Biggest Loser", with nifty prizes to the person who loses the greatest percentage of body weight. We have six weeks to get ourselves thin! Also, if anyone in/around Lubbock wants to join in, you still can on Saturday at the Lifestyle Centre at Covenant. Free T-shirt! Cool prizes!! Fun incentive to be healthy!!!


So since I've already mentioned a TV show, I think I'll move on to the "rant" portion of my blog post. (WARNING: If "American Idol" is your favourite show ever, skip ahead a few paragraphs.) So "American Idol" has started up again. Well, whoop-dee-doo. I would be so very neutral in feeling toward this little development, if not for the irritating fact that ignoring this show is not a simple matter of not watching it. No, because every morning show on the radio talks about it the next day (and also every other day, seemingly-- I don't even know what night it is actually on, because the radio talks about it so much), everyone at work is nattering on about it, my family watches it and they always want to talk about it, and, as a final blow, even the little children at church want to discuss it with me. Aaaaaaargh!!!

Now my beef is not with this show. There are lots of shows on TV that I don't care for. Here's my problem with this show: I go to church on Sunday and people are talking about it. I go to small group and people are talking about it. I go on Wednesday night and people are talking about it. I meet up with Christians at other times during the week (including at work) and they are STILL TALKING ABOUT IT. Is there nothing else going on in the world? No good works we could be doing? No people to pray for? Nothing? Have we nothing better to do than watch a show with the word "Idol" in its name??? The last time I checked my Bible, we were still supposed to be avoiding idols, correct? Yet it seems to me that Christians have grown so dull to the world around us that we don't even blink when a TV show blatantly claims to produce that to which our Lord is very much opposed! Not only do we not complain, but we watch it in droves. We are so in step with our culture we don't even see it-- this culture in which we are supposed to be different from everyone else. Where we are meant to be salt and light. And when I point this out to other Christians, their reactions (thus far) have ranged from laughing it off, to telling me I am overreacting.

And perhaps I am. Maybe the title of a TV show with a few years' run isn't worth getting upset about. Maybe its star will fade in a couple more seasons, as all TV shows seem to do eventually. Maybe I need to go hunt up those good works and do them myself, while everyone else is tied to their TVs. But what comes next? "Book of Daniel" came and went, thankfully short-lived. But what is the next TV project that defies God, and his people, to answer? For years, Satan has used Hollywood to his own purposes, subtly mocking God in shows ranging from "Star Trek" to "The Simpsons". And even when God is not out-and-out made a mockery, the lifestyles of your average TV character are anything but godly. "Everyone's doing it" is whispered-- or screamed-- out of our TV sets on a daily basis, and we let it happen. Maybe I'm overreacting, or maybe it's time to get rid of the TV and actually be different.


Okay, rant over! You can all wake up now! Stop cursing my name!


So now that the snow has melted, Lubbock has returned to as normal as we can be. A friend who works in a grocery store here in town told us about a woman who said, by way of explanation for buying enough food to see her family through until summer, "Well, even if the storm doesn't hit here, the trucks may not get through to make deliveries!" Yes, that's right, because everyone knows the grocery delivery trucks stop all deliveries north of the Mason-Dixon line from mid-November to mid-March-- and now they may include Lubbock in that embargo as well! Good heavens! In case you missed it, that was some pretty thick irony there. Being the daughter of a truck driver myself, I can tell you those people are as dedicated as the US Postal service when it comes to snow, sleet, and dead of night. If they can't make deliveries, their families don't eat, either, because they don't get paid. Also, tendency to jackknife aside, those trucks have huge wheels which generally can deal with 12 inches of snow, without too much difficulty. So much for the deliveries. Now if there had been enough snow to keep us at home (which there technically was, since Chad's work closed on Saturday and both of our jobs closed early Friday), Chad and I would have still gone to the store. It's only three blocks away. Our tiny little car may not be able to navigate more than a few inches of white stuff, but our feet can. And that, in fact, is exactly what we did on Saturday afternoon, just for the sake of getting out of the house for a while.

While on the subject, I would also like to mention that I went to the grocery store again last night, one week after the fateful evening of the store selling out of almost everything, people fighting over loaves of bread and gallons of milk, and customers waiting 30-45 minutes in line to pay. This time around, it was blessedly empty, only a few shoppers to be seen, the shelves were well-stocked, and I got right to the register and out! While there, I did take the opportunity to peruse the poultry section, and was enlightened (and also puzzled) to see that there is a sign advertising "Natural Chicken". Now I'm sure there is a healthy, organic, and otherwise expensive explanation to what the difference is, but I spent the rest of the evening pondering, Are the rest of the chickens "unnatural"? Are they all claymation chickens? Was Chicken Run correct in its depiction? If so, that should give the conspiracy theorists something to cluck about for some time to come-- this movie was not a children's film at all, but a cleverly disguised expose of the chicken industry!! We've all been bamboozled into eating unnatural chickens for years! No wonder the whole country is fat! Someone new to sue! Hip, hip, hooray!!!


Our Mission Fare last Sunday was quite a success, we felt rewarded for the amount of time we had poured into it! Not only ourselves, of course, but also every other booth coordinator, as well as the people running the whole show, and everyone else who helped out to one degree or another. I've wondered how many combined hours were spent on this project, but I'm not sure I want to know! It was a lot of fun, and quite a bit of money was raised for the youth group trip to Casa de la Esperanza this summer.


Okay, I've run out of hot air for this particular edition of the insane wanderings of Susan's unnatural brain (it has been hanging about with those chickens). Stay tuned!